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Tag: firefighter

I really did try to get more footage from our live fire exercise than I finally ended up getting. The reason is quite simple: our first attack was into such a hot fire that the GoPro case melted enough to leave the start/stop button inoperable. And since I’m not one to take my phone with me into that amount of heat, I had no way of starting and stopping the recordings. So the only helmet cam footage is from when I went into the smoke during our first attack.

Trust me, although it goes dark as soon as we enter the building, it was hot and smoky for the next three minutes until we put out the fire and started venting. But the video is also a realistic version of what it really looks like when fire fighters enter a burning structure. The high visibility and pretty flames you see on TV and in movies are fiction.

P.S. You can see what my helmet and GoPro looked like after the first attack on Instagram. Although note that I’d already cleaned up the lens to make sure the case was still usable.

This has been a peculiar year as we’ve had the opportunity to have two live fire exercises followed by controlled burns of the buildings once we are done exercising. The house this time was a traditional post-war single family home that often has livable areas in the basement and top floor but they could be initially left unfinished.

We only used the ground floor during our exercise since the second floor was much too open to burn in a controlled fashion. The basement was left untouched due to safety concerns.

I also had a GoPro attached to my helmet, but our first attack (in which I was participating and not photographing) was so hot that my helmet and the GoPro housing took quite a bit of damage. The fact that it was so hot also meant that I got about five seconds of usable footage before the world went dark from smoke. If nothing else, that footage can serve as an excellent example of what the reality of entering a burning building is like when compared to what is seen in movies and TV.

Over on Facebook there has been a challenge going around (at least us Finns) to document five days of your every day life and post the photographs. So below is a glimpse of my every day life: work, dogs, fire and rescue, CrossFit…

I don’t exactly recall when I first heard about CrossFit. Probably sometime around 2009 when Mikko Salo won the second ever CrossFit Games. I got more exposure to it off and on – mostly off. In early 2013 I saw this video of bodyweight exercises and slowly started looking more and more into CrossFit. Alas, at the time there weren’t any boxes near us, but I remember trying some WODs of my own. Fran – even heavily scaled and tamed – killed me but hooked me at the same time. With motivation like in the below video I had a goal…

Luckily at the same time I found out that a gym in Joensuu was building a box and would begin offering CrossFit. They started their first on-ramp in August, and I decided to enroll in October as soon as we’d be back home from a three week road trip in the US. Of course, you know what they say about the best laid plans… 11 000 km of driving in three weeks caused both golf and tennis elbows in my left arm. So CrossFit and pretty much all other strength training was out of the question while I tried to settle down the inflammations.

In January I was finally able to enter an on-ramp and join the world of CrossFit athletes. Even though the first hour left me gasping and in pain until the next class, I knew this was my sport. Now, two months after my on-ramp ended and three months into my career as a CrossFit athlete, I know that I am hooked and addicted.

And yes, in the coming weeks I will be reporting on goals and progress so far…